Everywhere…

You’ve seen a lot of here through my posts of the past and I’ve shown you quite a bit of there through the last few posts. I’m having trouble finding the rest of the photos I wanted to wind up there with so now we are going to everywhere so you can see the blank slate that I am starting with… This is a rental home so I won’t be able to be as comfortable in doing any radical creativity but I can certainly make the place feel more like a home.

Here we go…

The house is on a corner and has this fourteen foot wall in the front yard. I’m already planning on what I’m going to do out here.

There are a few neglected and older shrubs along the about 3 foot wide bed that goes along the walk heading up to the front door.

then the walk is right along the house to the nook where you find the front door. This is looking north to the stockade fence. The shrub on the right is a rose of sharon that was there when we rented. Our rose of sharon that I’ll be bringing is younger and shorter and I will plant it closer to the brick pillar.

This is a crepe myrtle and there is one planted on either side of the drive way and you know that something else is going to be planted in there so it doesn’t look so plain.

This is looking up the side yard from another gate in the stockade fencing. I love the fence, SueSue doesn’t. She can’t see what’s going on in her world except for the occasional squirrel that drops into the yard, the she is on a mission to get that critter. Being the ornery and lazy woman that I am, I’m going to start feeding the birds AND the squirrels. After I need some entertainment to lighten my day occasionally, too. And if she catches one and kills it, I know how to skin them and fry them. I’m not too worried about that happening, because while Suess is fast she is not quite bright. She runs straight at them and you know squirrels can twist and turn on a dime…

This is the back yard. It is pretty large which the girls love, except with the stockade fence they can’t keep track of what all might be going on in their corner of the world.

This is the side of the house that the front is on, just the other side of the fence.

As I do my planting thing, I will take pictures along but I must tell you that Carol’s sister has her ideas about how we should plant the place. She, besides being rapid cycling bi-polar, has got to be ocd as much as she likes and needs order in her life.

She likes things in a row, I like things the flow. When I got to the house I took my babies out and looked around. When I saw a number of plants all along the back fence all in a row and almost exact distance apart. I just got my shovel out of the truck and started working on them… even as boring as she like it. Carol and I have lived together for so long that she know that there is method to my madness and whatever I do usually comes out somewhat unusual. And usually she loves what I do even if I do things somewhat with odd combinations that I enjoy trying odd colors and/or textures. So I know that while I will keep as many plants alive as I can, this will be essentially a plain, basic garden because the riots of color and shapes of a garden that Carol and I both enjoy is like raucous noise to her sister.

So as I get things planted and growing I’ll keep you posted but for right now, besides my life being bland, I’m so exhausted from the moving that I probably won’t be a very interesting blogger. And if I don’t live through this move I just want to say thanks to all of you who have become my friends through this wonderful blogging medium.

Bosoms, Buddies: Part Deux

When I was about twenty one I decide to bite the bullet and take the matters in hand, as it were, and see if there was anything I could do to assist Mother Nature.  A very sincere friend told me if I could get fitted in a bra that wasn’t padded the girls might have room to grow.

So with high hopes and a good amount of gullibility I set off on the mission to become more,  ummm, boobalicious.

Back in the day, 40+ years ago, the upscale department store in Oklahoma City was John A. Brown’s.  It is now known as Dillard’s, but back then it was still John A. Brown’s.  Please excuse the wandering back in time. It seems to happen a lot these days… Now, where was I?

Oh, yes.  Taking affirmative steps to prove or disprove the validity of the claim of non-padded bras.  I am, if nothing else, enthusiastic in the pursuit.  I don’t know why.  The girls, although miniscule have done fine up to this point, but I digress.

I confidently stride into the lingerie department and head for foundations.  Here is where it starts getting dicey.  The saleslady approaches me and in a kindly, but professional tone said, “May I help you sir?” 

I started to turn on my heel and hot-foot it out the door, but I took a deep breath and said, “I’m a young woman and I need to try to get fitted for a non-padded bra.”

Mind you while I did have on casual clothes and my hair was short, though not as short as now, I did have on a padded bra at the time.  Anyway, the saleslady kind of arched her eyebrow and asked me to follow her to the fitting room.  Well, I disrobed, which was traumatic enough being shy back in the day, and the lady took her measurements that she needed and went on the quest.

When she returned with several possibilities in hand we started trying them on.  I kid you not, every single bra I tried on, and there were a few, you could roll up the cup, the A-cup I might add, you could roll it up and pin it and it wouldn’t have made a difference.  Bless her heart, the lady tried, she did. Made several trips out to try different brand names.  After the last round she very kindly suggested that I might try the juniors department. Perhaps they could help me there.  I thanked her for her patience, dressed and walked straight out of the store and never looked back.

Fast forward now to Christmas when I was sixty years old.  I was in Ft. Worth at Ben and Diane’s (baby brother and s.i.l.) and we were opening gifts. Ben handed me a package and I looked and saw it was from Laura, the niece that is getting married next month.  I proceeded to open it with all eyes upon me and it was two brassieres from Victoria’s Secret.  I know I must have gone red with embarrassment because there are some things that you don’t want to open on Christmas with everyone watching. Laura, in her sweetest voice said, “Aunt Helen, you need to start wearing a bra.”

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get used to wearing a bra after sixty years of not wearing a bra?

With age and menopause combined, the forty pounds I put on had endowed me somewhat, and I guess the tank top tees and the loose t-shirt or tops over them wasn’t enough to not embarrass the kid.

So the two things I’ve been making myself do for this month before the wedding is wearing shoes when I go out to dig in the flower beds and garden because it is dang hard cleaning the dirt out from under toenails and…

Wearing a bra of some sorts, whether it’s a jog bra or a regular one, so I won’t be fidgeting and pulling at it during the wedding and reception.

That’s my bosom tale and it is a true story. 

I hope to post some more corn another corn post this evening.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Corn Report…

Some days are diamonds, other days…. well, let’s just say I’m a techno-idiot and I need a brain. While reading Robynn’s Ravings yesterday she told about a life changing experience. Windows Live Writer. Another blogger she reads had told her to go download it. It would provide her with a no-hassle way to write her blog, post pictures and more without the headaches of Blogger.

So why not check it out, Helen, I’m thinkin’? Maybe there is a way to blog that doesn’t involve cuss words and stompin’ around the house grumbling in frustration. I have it on my new computer, so let’s go see it dance and shine…

I’m here to testify right now in front of God and all you blogging friends. I could screw up a wet dream. Yep. I could…

I had to first go find WLW on my computer. No problem. I opened up my all programs screen (I know how to go there, I just don’t for sure know that’s what it’s called, but y’all do) and I found it, clicked on it and brought it up and did the happy sitting down dance thinkin’ oh boy I’m gonna tear it up on my corn report.

I loaded the pictures I took to show you all the growth of the corn. WLW even put them where I wanted them AT THAT MOMENT. Then I went back up to the top to start writing next to the first picture… It wouldn’t let me start where I wanted to start. The cursor, a good name for it by the way, would stay right beside the BOTTOM of the first picture. WTF? This can’t be happening. Robynn and two others she suggested I look at all said with happy tunes in their ‘voices’ and flowers dancing around their heads how easy WLW is to write on and post photos on then transfer to their blog.

Back to the drawing board for me. I guess I’m going to have to find someone with a lot of patience to help me figure out this computer stuff. Now I’m going to upload the photos I wanted to put on my corn report. I don’t have a clue where they will end up on here. Then I’m going to try to “transfer them to your blog”, not yours, of course, to mine. I was just quoting the tutorial…

So here’s mud in your eye, as I raise my glass of Diet Pepsi. We’ll see how it goes. The good day corn is on the left. The bad day is to the right. Good. Bad.

You see where good and bad is typed next to the photo. That’s where WLW wanted me to start typing. If you look at every other post I’ve done I like to start at the top of the photo and write beside it. I tried moving the cursor by clicking at the top of the photo… no luck. It just showed up at the bottom like the above. I tried backspacing… took out the photo. I tried cursing the cursor and I swear I saw little hands waving on either side of it and a little pink tongue giving me the raspberries. Naner, naner poopoo.

I hope this will transfer to my blog. If it does, I’ll be ever so thankful. If not, I’m going to go pull weeds. It’s only supposed to get to 104 today and I’m hotter that that right now.

Suck It Up, Girlfriend...

I did get out of bed, I did take a bath and I might have even talked to one or two people, at least maybe one or two words.

I've got to come back to life for THE GAME Thursday night. I've got to come alive and bake some cookies tomorrow or Thursday to have to pig on during THE GAME.

Lisa over at My New Thing To Do read my sugar cookie recipe and sent me one of her's to try, so I'm going to give it a try tomorrow or Thursday and I promised her that I would let her know what I think of them.

I've got to come back to some reasonable facsimile of life because even my SueSue didn't want to sleep with me last night. She left Chloe and me, jumped off the bed even before I went to sleep and got on another roommate's bed and went to sleep... even before Pat (the roomie) went to bed!!! Could you, if you were me, look at that face and not feel guilty for being a grumpy old woman?

So I've got to snap out of it whether I want to or not... Before even my precious Chloe takes flight, too. Since she just turned 9, or 63 in human years, she may have decided that, after all these years, she made her bed and she might as well hang in there with me.





In my present state of mind I will not read anything into this hang-dogged, resigned-to-her-fate-look.



We've been through a lot worse together.